Birmingham First United Methodist Church, 1589 W. Maple Rd., Birmingham, MI 48009
Turn on the TV, open a newspaper, browse social media: everyone is talking about new ideas for expanding American healthcare coverage. As consumers and voters, it can be hard to know which option is best for our families, our neighbors, and our nation.
This timely forum will help you make sense of Medicare for All; Medicare and Medicaid Buy-Ins; adding public plan features to private insurance; improving the Affordable Care Act (ACA); and other options discussed in the media.
I've included the transcript below, but words can't accurately describe the tone of voice or the body language of Grassley in the actual video, so I'll just urge everyone to watch it.
WOMAN: "What is your plan to keep millions of Americans like myself covered? Those of us with pre-existing conditions, people who are on their parents insurance, and again, people like myself who need life-guaranteeing medication? We could lose our insurance and I'd probably be dead in 2 months."
GRASSLEY: "Well, there's a...there's a lot of, uh...and she's asking only because the courts may declare [the ACA] unconstitutional. Now, I don't think that the courts are going to declare it unconstitutional..."
WOMAN: "You voted seven times to repeal it."
GRASSLEY: (pause) "Yes."
WOMAN: "Why? What are you going to do for people on the ACA?"
Just a few minutes ago I noted that the state of Oregon is once again strongly considering taking a second crack at establishing their own, fully state-based ACA exchange after spending the past five years piggybacking on top of HealthCare.Gov.
Steps like a mandate for Oregon residents to buy health insurance and relief for exchange customers who earn too much to receive tax credits under the Affordable Care Act could help reverse premium hikes that have shot up amid attempts by the Trump administration to roll back the law, OSPIRG, the Oregon State Public Interest Group, argued in a report released Wednesday.
There are 12 states which operate their own full ACA exchanges, including their own board of directors, marketing budget, bylaws and tech platform for their enrollment website. 34 states have offloaded just about all of that to the federal exchange, HealthCare.Gov.
And then there are five states which are in between: They have their own state-based exchange...but their tech platform is basically piggybacked onto the federal exchange: Arkansas, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon.
Nevada and Oregon had such major technical problems at launch that they scrapped their sites after the first year and moved to the Mothership. Hawaii also scrapped their exchange site after the second or third year, but they shut down their entirestate-based exchange and moved everything to HC.gov). Nevada announced that they're giving their own full exchange a second shot this November.
"Medicaid Work Requirements" have been in the news a lot over the past two years as the Trump Administration has given states the go-ahead to start imposing increasingly draconian, humiliating and ineffective work requirements for low-income people to avoid losing healthcare coverage.
For the most part, though, the work requirement bills have at the very least been restricted to ACA expansion of the Medicaid program to "able-bodied" adults earning up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Line (roughly $17,000/year for a single adult or $23,300 for a couple without minor children).
Today, Joan Alker of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Center for Children & Famlies reports that the Florida House of Representatives is planning on taking the cruelty even further:
URGENT: On Thursday, the Florida House will take up the harshest Medicaid work reporting requirement bill that I’ve EVER seen. As many as 100,000, mostly mothers, could lose their health insurance. https://t.co/64uRz23Puk
(sigh) I wrote about "Farm Bureau Plans" several times last year. They've been widespread in Tennessee for a long time, and are a big part of the reason for the state's high ACA premiums (TN doesn't have the highest premiums, but they're definitely near the top of the list). Here's the description of typical Tennessee "Farm Bureau" plans:
Traditional plans require medical underwriting that may affect eligibility and rates. Medical information will be requested for any person over the age of 40 and children 25 months and under; medical records may also be requested if any health condition on the application is marked “yes.” Any fees for obtaining medical information will be at the applicant’s expense.
Underwriting guidelines regarding particular conditions may necessitate a benefit exclusion rider, a member exclusion rider or an adjusted rate for coverage. There will be a 6-month or 12-month waiting period for pre-existing conditions, depending upon the plan chosen.
Single-payer, I think we should have that debate as a nation. But let me remind everybody that Aetna was the first financial intermediary for Medicare. We cut the first check for Medicare in 1965 to Hartford Hospital for $517.57.
The government doesn’t administer anything. The first thing they’ve ever tried to administer in social programs was the ACA, and that didn’t go so well. So the industry has always been the back room for government. If the government wants to pay all the bills, and employers want to stop offering coverage, and we can be there in a public private partnership to do the work we do today with Medicare, and with Medicaid at every state level, we run the Medicaid programs for them, then let’s have that conversation.
The Notice for Benefit and Payment Parameters (NBPP) is an annual rule that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) puts out. NBPP is the operational rule book for the Affordable Care Act. It determines what types of plans can be offered, how pricing is determined, when do things need to be approved, and whether or not Silver Loading is allowed or a Broad Load is required. This is all big stuff for the ACA markets.
The annual NBPP is supposed to be released sometime in November. Last year it wasn't released until December. This year it's mid-January and still no NBPP, although it's supposedly trudging along slowly
There seems to be something in the air this week...or perhaps it just takes roughly 3 months from the time a new legislative session starts for the first legislation to work its way through the process. Whatever the reason, Washington, Connecticut and now Nevada have all made major moves towards codifying ACA patient protections at the state level in the even the ACA itself is repealed:
The Nevada Senate has passed a bill that would enact state-level health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
State Sen. Julia Ratti says the legislation aims to bring about protections that are already in place under the Affordable Care Act. The Democrat told lawmakers last month that people are worried about their health care access.
She says Nevada should make sure these protections are in place at the state level if the federal provisions are rolled back.
State senators approved the measure on Monday in a unanimous vote.
The measure stipulates that insurers cannot deny a person health care coverage due to a pre-existing condition.
